Friday, August 13, 2010

Top 5 Anime-ish Shows

No wait, that's just M. Night Shyamalan's career. Here's hopin' for a comeback.

So the live-action Last Airbender movie didn't fare that well. Oh well. It's still based on a pretty keen cartoon, known for its anime influence. Airbender's not alone. Here's our

Top 5 Anime-ish Shows

#5 - Dexter's Laboratory

It's no secret that Cartoon Network/Cartoon Cartoon creators Craig McCracken and GenndyTartakovsky are huge anime fans. You don't see as many anime tropes in Dexter's Lab as you do in other shows (see below!), but you do get some of the best anime spoofs of all time, including homages to Speed Racer and Voltron, among others.

#4 - Avatar: The Last Airbender

Before it got lost in the summer movie sludge, The Last Airbender was known as Nickelodeon's serious cartoon series with an epic storyline at an epic scale (61 episodes). Check out this Emmy-winning series about the four element nations and its lovable bald hero.

#3 - Powerpuff Girls

We're not even talking about the Powerpuff Girls Z actual ANIME spin-off show. McCracken's cute super-hero girl show arose from mixing Chemical X with "sugar, spice, and everything nice." Its also a blend of both anime and old Hanna-Barbera 'toons (Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Flintstones), as seen in the show's opening . . .

#2 - Teen Titans

This DC Comics show goes in a different direction to the near adult-ish Batman and related Bruce Timm-produced series. Rather than brooding, atmospheric episodes, we get hyperkinetic shows complete with super-deformed faces. And the opening comes in both Japanese and English versions, both sung by Japanese rock duo Puffy AmiYumi.

#1 - Samurai Jack

Perhaps the purest love story to Japan cinema from GenndyTartakovsky. Samurai Jack is a sci-fi samurai futuristic fantasy that oozes mood-setting and action sequences from various martial arts and samurai films, including some anime methods.

This here is a quality list of shows for ya. Add them to your DVD collection if you call yourself an animation fan of any kind.

Here's hoping the new manga-inspired Scott Pilgrim film can fare much better at the box office!

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